In an ardent speech before the Conservative
party conference, George Osborne said that some multinational technology firms
go to "extraordinary lengths" not to pay tax in the UK. "You are
welcome here in Britain with open arms," said the Chancellor to those
firms. "While we offer some of the lowest business taxes in the world, we
expect those taxes to be paid… If you abuse our tax system, you abuse the trust
of the British people," he continued, vowing to stop such abuses. New
legislation will prevent global technology firms from doing what is known as a
'double Irish' - in short, using artificial arrangements to divert profits to offshore
tax havens that have been earned in the UK. Companies such as Google have faced
grillings by politicians on the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee over
why they appear to pay low rates of tax in the UK. Google was branded
"devious" and accused of operating "smoke and mirrors" when
it appeared before the PAC last year, charges which the company denied. TELEGRAPH

Apple may have to repay billions from Irish
government tax deal

Apple’s international headquarters are based in
Knocknaheeny, a run-down northern suburb of Cork. Two-thirds of Apple’s global
profits for 2011 were attributed to companies registered in Cork. Apple says
that it pays all taxes due. EU Commission experts say it paid just 3.7% tax on
non-US profits of $31bn (£19bn) last year. The European commission has formally
opened an investigation into the Irish deal. The outgoing competition
commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, said the commission’s preliminary investigation
suggests that deals made between Apple and the Irish government in 1991 and
2007 “constitute state aid” and that “the commission has doubts about the
compatibility of such state aid with the internal market [in the EU]”. He said
that a deal which replaced them in 2007 also breaks the rules. Apple has also
come under fire in the US for its complex tax arrangements, under which a
company called Apple Sales International, which until 2012 had no employees and
was controlled by a US-based board, is based in Ireland – where in 2011 it paid
taxes of $10m on revenues of $22bn from non-US-based Apple activities, a rate
equivalent to 0.045%. Senator Carl Levin, who published a damning report on
Apple’s tax practices last year, issued a strong statement in support of the
investigation. “The facts are abundantly clear: Apple developed its crown jewels
– lucrative intellectual property – in the United States, used a tax loophole
to shift the profits generated by that valuable property offshore to avoid
paying US taxes, then boosted its profits through a sweetheart deal with the
Irish government,” said Levin, who chairs the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations. Over 40 multinationals – including Amazon, Google and software
security group McAfee – have operations in and around Cork, bringing 100,000
jobs to the area, according to Conor Healy, chief executive of the Cork chamber
of commerce. GUARDIAN

Banks face paying out billions to more than
12million customers after landmark legal battle against Lloyds over 'unfair'
£750 fine for customer who was just £2.67 overdrawn

Oliver Foster-Burnell from Taunton, Somerset,
went a few pounds over his £500 limit with Lloyds while he was in between jobs
in 2008. Within weeks, the 28-year-old received a letter saying for that every
day since he had been charged £20 by the bank. The fees spiralled to £750
before Mr Foster-Burnell was able to find a way out of his financial mess. But,
after settling his debts, he took his case to county court where a judge
ordered the bank to pay back the fees with interest. His victory could pave the
way for billions to be returned to customers in similar situations if Mr Foster-Burnell
is able to convince a High Court Judge that his case could apply to others. If
successful, banks could face returning as much as £30billion to 12.6million
customers, according to a study by The Office of Fair Trading. DAILY MAIL

Household energy bills rise 4% while price paid
for gas and electricity by Big Six suppliers falls by up to 20%

Consumer organisation Which? executive director,
Richard Lloyd, said: 'The Competition and Markets Authority should now
investigate how the independent regulator could establish a price people can
trust that will spur suppliers to compete and reassure worried consumers that
they're not being ripped off.’ MPs also discovered earlier this month that
energy customers face a £215 bill for the installation of smart meters that
will only save them around 3 per cent on their average annual bill by 2030 – a
much smaller saving than had been predicted. Public spending watchdog, the
Commons public accounts select committee, estimated the smart meter rollout
will cost £10.6billion for the actual meters, with households forking out up to
£11 running costs a year, plus the £215 cost of installing the meter. DAILY MAIL

Lloyds sacks eight traders over Libor and other rate
rigging scandal, and claws back £3million in bonuses in the process

Lloyds dismissed the traders over attempts to
rig the Libor interest rate and another rate used to calculate what the bank
paid to use a government scheme designed to help save it from collapse during
the depths of the banking crisis. Sources familiar with the situation said that
the laws on recouping bonuses made it impossible to claw back payouts, worth
millions more, that have already been pocketed. But the sacked bankers could face
further financial penalties, bans from working in the City, or even criminal
prosecution, amid ongoing probes by the Serious Fraud Office and City regulator
the Financial Conduct Authority. Lloyds was initially investigating some 22
staff, four of whom have since returned to work after being exonerated by an
internal probe. A further 10 have escaped without any punishment because they
left the bank before it could claw back any bonuses or other payouts for
misconduct. The bank was slapped with fines adding up to £218million by US and
UK regulators earlier this year, after dealers tried to manipulate the Libor
inter-bank lending rate and the Sterling repo rate. Chief executive Antonio
Horta-Osorio sought to draw a line under wrongdoing at Lloyds, in the light of
what he called ‘totally unacceptable behaviour’. The FCA is understood to be
considering further action against the Lloyds staff, which could include bans
from working in the City or fines worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. And
the Serious Fraud Office, which has brought criminal charges against 12 people
in connection with rigging Libor, is thought to be considering further
prosecutions. Banking analysts still expect billions of pounds in new fines,
with Barclays, RBS and HSBC expected to join a settlement of up to £1.8billion
with six firms accused of foreign exchange manipulation. Analysts at Bank of
America said Barclays, RBS and HSBC were facing £14billion in future fines,
when including issues such as RBS’ role in the sale of US mortgage-backed
securities widely seen as a key trigger for the global financial meltdown of
2008. DAILY MAIL

Wonga profits nosedive by 53% as it counts the
cost of fake legal letter scandal - and reveals it will now be 'smaller and
less profitable'

Pre-tax profits fell to £39.7million and the
company said it expects to be 'smaller and less profitable' in the near term
while it cleans up its image and reshapes its business. It said the slide in
profits was due in part to a one-off charge in relation to the fake letter
scandal earlier this year. Wonga sent thousands of bogus letters from made up
law firms 'Chainey, D'Amato & Shannon' and ‘Lowe Legal Recoveries' to
mislead customers into believing their outstanding debt had been passed to
lawyers, it was revealed in June. It was forced to pay £2.6million in
compensation to the customers. The FCA is also bearing down on providers of
short-term credit, proposing earlier in the summer a cap on payday lending
meaning that from next January, interest and fees must not exceed 0.8% per day
of the amount borrowed. It also wants to impose a cap on the overall cost of a
payday loan so that it cannot exceed 100 per cent of the original sum borrowed. DAILY MAIL

Consumers face 'lost decade' as spending squeeze
bites

Annual wage growth is likely to remain well
below the 4.5%-to-5% rises seen before the financial crisis struck in 2008, the
EY Item Club survey says. This will slow consumer spending growth over the next
two years. Median pay in real-terms is forecast to fall from £18,852 in 2008 to
£17,827 by 2017, the survey suggests. The Item club, a non-governmental
forecaster that uses HM Treasury's model of the UK economy, believes that
record numbers of people in work - currently 30.6 million - will act as a brake
on wage rises. The report expects the pace of consumer spending growth to be 2%
over the next two years, compared to the annual average growth rate of 3.7%
during the pre-crisis decade. "Total household incomes have strengthened
because more people are in work, but individuals do not have extra money in
their pockets," said Martin Beck, the EY Item Club's senior economic
adviser. "Real wages are being held back by strong growth in the supply of
workers and the fact that firms are facing increased non-wage costs, such as
new pension schemes," he added. Mr Beck believes the so-called
"squeezed middle" - households containing neither highly-skilled nor
low paid workers - will continue to see limited growth in disposable income as
pay rises remain below the rate of inflation - currently 1.5% - and competition
for jobs remains strong. Younger people in particular face the most pressure on
spending, the report concludes, as unemployment among people in their 20s and
30s remains above average and the cost of buying a property continues to rise. BBC NEWS

Top fund manager Neil Woodford says his industry
overcharges

One of the country's most successful fund
managers has criticised his industry for charging customers too much, and
paying its managers too much. Neil Woodford says fund managers often claim to
be actively managing a fund, when in reality they are following the herd. This
means fund managers don't actively choose which stocks to invest in, but
instead tend to follow a big index such as the FTSE 100. However, he says that
wiser customers and stricter regulation will lead to lower fees in the future.
Mr Woodford set up his own fund in May and has £7bn under management. Neil
Woodford is considered in the industry as one of the country's best performing
fund managers. He puts that down to always taking a long-term view on his
investments, arguing that most fund managers take a far too short-term
approach. "Fund managers are constrained by the fear that if they were to
underperform the index for a three, six or 12 month period, their careers would
be in jeopardy," he said. As a result, Mr Woodford argues, they are
reluctant to buck the trend or invest in start-ups. BBC NEWS

Banking regulator FCA may fine banks £2bn for currency-rigging

The City regulator has this week held secret
talks with some of the world's biggest banks about a settlement for the
manipulation of global foreign exchange markets that could cost the lenders a
total of around £2bn in fines. The banks, which also include Barclays, HSBC,
Royal Bank of Scotland, Citi, JP Morgan and UBS, would pay different sums, depending
on the gravity of their traders' alleged efforts to artificially move foreign
currency rates. However, a person close to the talks said the FCA had informed
some of the banks' lawyers that the smallest of the penalties imposed for
foreign exchange-rigging were likely easily to outstrip the biggest of the
fines it has so far handed out for manipulation of the interbank borrowing rate
Libor. Such an outcome would chime with a warning from Martin Wheatley, the FCA
chief executive, in February, when he told MPs that allegations about collusion
to rig prices in the $5.3tn (£3.25tn) spot market were "every bit as bad
as they have been with Libor". The largest fine dished out by the FCA for
Libor-rigging to date was £160m paid by UBS in December 2012. SKY NEWS

For every fatal accident, 100 construction
workers die from a work-related cancer

During a month long initiative, the Health and
Safety Executive (HSE) will carry out unannounced visits to sites where
refurbishment projects or repair works are underway. From 22 September, HSE
Inspectors will ensure high-risk activities particularly those affecting the
health of workers, are being properly managed. These include working with
harmful dusts such as silica and asbestos, and other hazardous substances. If
unacceptable standards are found Inspectors will take immediate enforcement
action. HSE is urging industry to ‘think health’ as over 30,000 construction
workers are made ill by their work every year. Philip White, HSE Chief
Inspector of Construction, said: “Industry has made much progress in reducing
the number of people killed and injured in its activities, but for every fatal
accident, approximately 100 construction workers die from a work-related
cancer. During the recent health initiative, enforcement action was taken on
one in six sites. Time and again we find smaller contractors working on
refurbishment and repair work failing to protect their workers through a lack
of awareness and poor control of risks. This isn’t acceptable – it costs lives,
and we will take strong and robust action where we find poor practice and risky
behaviour.” HEALTH & SAFETY EXECUTIVE